Whatever is written on my birth certificate is irrelevant. In my mind, I was born in the back yard of a villa in Aalborg, and the memory of the day I came into this world is one of the most vivid memories I have.
I am about eight years old, and my foster mother at the time is yelling at me from the bottom of that tree I’ve crawled up into. In my hand I’m still holding the stone I’ve used to smash her greenhouse. All the panes, all the way round. The roof I couldn’t reach. A blessing, really, for had I shattered the roof as well, glass would have rained on my head. But things are bad enough as they are. I have a deep gash in my right upper arm, it’s bleeding, and my foster mother, whose name I cannot remember, is screaming for me to come down at once. But I’m not listening. She’s an evil cow, and she isn’t my mother. I pitch a glob of spit through the leaves below, it splatters on her upturned face.
That was the summer I got the first cut on my arm, and it was also my first conscious memory after the “family tragedy,” as Dr. Erhadsen poetically insisted on calling it. He had a tendency to embroider when reality became too concrete for him.
Whatever had given rise to my destruction of the greenhouse remains a mystery. There were snippets of a blue bathroom, floral tiles, a man going for a walk with a dog. But those memories could just as easily have stemmed from a later stage. I had been with seven foster families in five years. Nobody liked me, and, as a rule, the feeling was mutual. I knew I needed someone, but it wasn’t Hanne, Lene, Bodil or Bentha—or whatever it was the bitches were called. Irrespective of who they sent me to, the result was always the same: I screamed and yelled, thrashed out at the adults, bit the children, if there were any.
I was a freak.
I knew this already, and I wasn’t the only one who knew it. The rest of the world could see it as well. It had been written in the newspapers, and it was written in those piles of papers that followed me from foster family to foster family, followed me to the Bakkegården Institute—home sweet home—and finally, the web of welfare programs, flexi-jobs, sick leave, and the Guidance for Young Underprivileged Mothers. Everyone had always known. My father had blown my mother’s brains out. At times, I was absolutely certain it was written in my face; the tainted mark of shame. This was definitely the case in Hvidovre, and the first day in Klitmøller was no different, even as Alex and I ran barefoot along the sandy paths among the dunes, the roar from the ocean looming larger and larger.
At the top of the final dune, Alex stopped and turned suddenly, staring out over the grey-blue hills of sand, eyes shining bright with glee.
“Fucking amazing,” he said after a long while. “Is this where you come from?”
I nodded, something knotting in my chest. This was the first and only thing from my childhood I had ever shown Alex—and it was really beautiful. The sea was mine; it had rested in me like a deep, slow rush from a faraway place. And now the smooth, grey giant of a dune lay in front of me, untouched by the time that had come between us.
The sun beat down, and a couple of children ran wild like little savages along the shore, half-naked, white hair flying in the strong breeze. Alex was more reserved. He walked quietly on his own, collecting sea shells, mostly cockleshells and a few finely polished oyster shells. There were also a few bright-red crab claws with big jagged pincers, and bladder wrack that oozed a clear jelly when you squashed it between your fingers.
“Is there any amber to be found around here?”
Alex looked at me eagerly. The prospect of finding riches worth more than empty Coke cans was clearly exhilarating. I told him not to look between the stones, but higher up the beach, where the seaweed had gathered in a dark belt.
“Amber is relatively light,” I explained, not knowing where this knowledge was coming from. “A bit like plastic, so it washes higher up on the beach than the stones. The best time to look is just after a storm.”
A new text message from Kirsten bleeped in. The seventh since my flight from Lisa and Tom’s Neverland.
Where are you? call me so we can talk.
I switched off my phone and watched Alex curiously combing through twisted mounds of murky seaweed.
Afterward he built a sand castle and dug channels and moats with his bare hands. I lay on the beach, flat on my back, staring up into the sky. You couldn’t swim here, I knew instinctively—just as I seemed to know so much else about this place. Something had happened right here. A stump of memory came swimming towards me.
I had ignored a direct order and waded out into water over my knees. It is warm, the waves are unusually peaceful, of the kind that neither break nor foam on the top. You can actually see patches of the sand below, as well as a shoal of sticklebacks, and perhaps this is why I am distracted for a moment, my yellow pail has drifted beyond my reach. I think of calling for my father, but he is nowhere to be seen. Behind me the beach is deserted, the dunes a green mountain range. I take a few steps further out, then a few more, until finally I’m swimming a couple of strokes into the sea. It feels harmless, even though there is movement in the water, and I am lifted up from the bottom and dunked down again, the water momentarily splashing over my head. I reach out for the pail that has tilted on its side. I get two fingers under the red handle, reach down to put my feet down, and stand up.
But I can’t.
Cold hands are pulling my feet out from under me. It’s like trying to stand in a rushing river. Every time I try to put my feet down, they are swept out from under me, and I float further, out and away. But it’s only when I turn to look back at the beach that I’m struck with terror. I have been swept so deep into the foaming water that my lonely sand castle is an insignificant dot, a long, long way away. People can die like this, and I know it.
It’s so easy to die at sea. It happens every year on our beach. Germans and Dutchmen. Those who don’t know this great grey sea, the ones who believe they can ride the monster.
I move my arms and legs again, try to work my way across the cold, rushing current, but I have to wait till the shore curves to sweep me closer to land, only then can I dig my hands and feet into the sandy, cockleshell seabed and crawl up onto the beach. The sand is ripped away from the soles of my feet. My hands and feet and knees are cut and bleeding, the blood is trickling down my shins in a thin, flame-red stream as I limp back to my sand castle.
Then I catch sight of my dad on top of a dune, but he’s not looking in my direction. He’s looking at something else. I call out to him, and he turns towards me, shading his eyes against the sun.
We walk home in silence, hand in hand, don’t say anything to Mom. It’s our little secret. But I’m tired of secrets.
I got up a little too fast, and called to Alex. The feeling of stretching out a small, ice-cold hand to my father had made me nauseous. The memory was just as intrusive and unwelcome as a visit from one of those door-to-door Animal Rights fundraisers.
Alex came running towards me, his face alive with wonder. He had tossed his T-shirt, and his tendons trilled below the surface of his thin, boyish body. It wasn’t often I caught a glimpse of him like that, released of a pre-teen child’s critical and crippling view of himself, but every time it happened, I was stunned by the thought that all that beauty had come out of my own body. For my own part, I was thin, pale, and unglamorous. The only thing pretty about me was my hair. It was huge, a curly, dark-brown halo that looked like the work of a professional stylist at any given time of the day. You have to remember to appreciate the little things in life.
“Mom,” he said. “The house is shit, but this is really neat. How long are we staying?”
I didn’t reply.
We had reached the top of the last dune, and we could see down to the house, where a green sedan was parked. A guy was snooping around in the garden with a fat, black yapping dog following in his heels. He lifted the garage door and kicked at the foundation. I backed up, and sat down in a dip between the dunes. If we waited long enough, he would probably disappear again, whoever he was. But Alex had already acquired a sense of ownership.
“Shouldn’t you ask him what he wants? It is our house, after all.” His face was dark and wary. “What if he steals something?”
“Then he’d be sorely disappointed,” I said, running a tuft of lyme grass through my fingers.
“Come on!” Alex peeked over the dunes. “He’s still there. He’s going into the garage.”
He stuck his hands into the pockets of his shorts, just like he often did when one of my fits started building up.
“Fine,” I said, and got up reluctantly, taking my cigarettes and lighter out of my back pocket in the same motion. “But you must know that we run the risk of pissing him off when he finds there’s nothing to steal but my battered Nokia and your crusty lunch box. He might even shoot us. Thieves are designer-label freaks.”
Alex tried to smile, but didn’t succeed all too well, and he still had his hands in his pockets as we walked the last stretch to the house.
“Was there something in particular you wanted?”
The guy, who had now disappeared into the dark interior of the garage, popped up in the doorway and squinted at us through the sun, not otherwise looking especially suspect.
“Yes, excuse me,” he said, coming out into the light on the yard. Smiling. “I thought I might as well take a look around while I waited . . .”
He was about my age, between twenty-five and thirty years old. Track-suit pants, sneakers, and a thin, long-sleeved sweater, an earring in the left ear, and an infantile anchor tattooed on his neck. Probably a fisherman’s son or a fisherman-wannabe who’d had a one-week holiday job on a fishing boat between the eighth and ninth grade. His hands weren’t rough enough to have grappled with rope, fishing tackle, and salt-water for an extended period of time.
“Waited for what?”
The guy looked at me intensely for a moment, then his smile broke into a broad grin.
“You, it seems. Ella? Have you just arrived?”
“I got here yesterday,” I said.
“I can tell it’s you by the wild hair,” said the guy, pulling a smoke from his pocket. “We went to school together, perhaps you remember? My name is Thomas.”
“I can’t remember anything,” I snapped and made for the front door, steering Alex ahead of me with a firm hand between his shoulders.
I could feel the guy’s eyes in my back as I paused next to his dog. It lay chewing on something half-rotten, lazily wagging its tail.
Thomas.
I couldn’t remember him. Nothing. Faces from the past were pale shapeless moons against a black sky. I could have had friends. Perhaps I’d even missed them after the grown-ups packed me out of town. I couldn’t remember if I had—all I knew was that I had no desire to find out one way or the other.
“Hey, wait up a minute.”
He took several long strides after us. This guy Thomas was clearly not the type who could take a hint, and his broad west-Jutlandic accent irritated me just as much as his intrusive overfamiliarity. He spoke the language of my parents, and it made my skin crawl, my pulse throb.
“My dad asked me to let you know that he’s interested in buying the house, if the old lady wants to sell. It’s a large plot. And this is the last house that was built before the area became part of the conservancy; no neighbors in your back yard, and only one hundred yards to the sea.” He whistled, and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together by dint of demonstrating the property’s capital value. “The house has been empty for a few years now, but perhaps you’re thinking of staying?”
I didn’t answer. Kept my back turned to him.
“Have you talked to her? Your grandmother? Usually she doesn’t let anyone come anywhere near the house. People say she’s crazy. Either that or senile—or both.”
I turned to face him, and saw that look in his eyes I knew so well. Poor little girl. I was someone who inspired the same response that neglected puppies and performing bears at a circus did.
“She has that old guy Bæk-Nielsen keeping an eye on the place. Perhaps you’ve seen him? He’s the one who told my dad that you were here.” He stubbed out his smoke in the sand.
I thought about the old man Rosa and I had seen before. Apparently my grandmother’s supervisor had been spying on us.
“I haven’t spoken to her in years,” I said, quick-stepping to the door once more. “We don’t have . . . We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
When I put the keys in the lock, it stuck, and I inwardly cursed the city-paranoia that now was costing me precious seconds. My pulse was hammering through my whole body, with every heartbeat the clamor rang louder in my ears. Thomas had come up next to me, and, seeing me fumble with the lock, put a hand over mine.
“Here, let me try,” he said. “I think it could do with some oil. It’s pretty rusty. I can come over and see to it some time, if you’d like.”
He might as well have burnt me with an iron rod, so swiftly had I pulled my hand away, but he didn’t seem to notice. Just pushed the door open, taking a ridiculous bow as he did so. I didn’t invite him in.
“My mom still talks about what happened,” he said. “And then you just disappeared. Puff. René still lives here, and Robert and Mette got married. They’ve got the bakery.”
“I didn’t disappear,” I said. “I just moved away. And I can’t remember anything. Isn’t that what I just said, for Christ’s sake? I don’t have a clue who you are, okay? If you want to talk to my grandmother, do it yourself.”
I pulled Alex with me through the door and closed it behind me, my pulse beating hard and fast in my neck. My fingers hurt, in fact, the whole hand ached, my entire body was vibrating, but I got to the small, rock-hard couch before the shaking took hold with a vengeance. I managed to ask Alex to go on upstairs. He could look through the old Donald Duck comics in the loft in the meantime. I was okay, I assured him. He nodded, and reluctantly left me alone in the dark of the living room.
Big boy. I vowed to get a bottle of vodka for next time.